"' I do not depend on figures at all. I try an experiment and reason out the result, somehow, by methods which I could not explain.' And so it was that by testing 1,600 different materials, from coconut fibre to fishing line and even hair from a colleague's beard, Edison finally found a particular type of bamboo which could be used, in carbonized form, as the filament in the first proper incandescent light bulb. He demonstrated it on New Year's Eve 1879 at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey."
- The Economist December 5th 2015
